Cover-up over neo-Nazi murders in Germany

Page last updated at 05:10 GMT, Friday, February 3, 2012 - 10:10 EST

Today's Zaman:

In 2003 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that banning the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party (NPD) -- the most significant neo-Nazi party to emerge since 1945, which campaigns on an anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic platform -- was unconstitutional.

The reason was that the NPD's leadership was infiltrated by informants from the German national security agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). In its reasoning, the court said it could not ban a party whose policies may have been shaped in part by government agents. German magazine Spiegel reported that there were more than 130 informants in the party, and intelligence services were concerned that more than 100 could be exposed if the NPD was banned.

If we follow the reasoning behind the German court's decision, it is clear that the federal government knew very well what the NPD and its associates were up to since the beginning. In other words, German officials could not claim ignorance for the killings of eight Turkish and one Greek citizen -- apparently committed by neo-Nazi suspects who were affiliated with the NPD.

Read the whole story: Today's Zaman